Planetside 2 Opinions from a PS1 Vet. Partially Satisfied yet not fully engaged.

[Emperor Newt]

Originally Posted by Palerion

I've been struggling back and forth with the high or low TTK argument. I can't seem to decide for myself if high or low is best. If you wouldn't mind explaining in a little bit more depth how the high time to kill would work better for such a massive-scale shooter, I would appreciate it. Personally I would be worried about players being almost invincible to make stupid decisions and run out in the open with high time to kill, and I think low time to kill forces the player to be smarter and more conscious about his exposition to the enemy. I think it also allows the player to take out groups of unaware enemies if the situation presents itself, which is good, since power should not derive sheerly from numbers.

Well, I dont know Of course it's a fine balance with pros and cons on both sides. The issue I see with the current implementation is that in huge engagements required pushes towards the enemy do not happen because people are afraid to die. Also many engagements lack infantry because people prefer to sit in their tanks, simply because they won't die as fast in it (and rank up more xp). And one cannot really blame them for that, as the game requires you to stay alive to get those certs and infantry dies incredibly quickly, especially to vehicles (which are over abundant in numbers).

But I don't think that is is actually related all too much to ttk, although I would say infantry should be able to take one or two additional bullets (especially the personal shield, to give emp more of a use). Maybe it's more of a problem related to the counter system of the game, like some AV weapons also being highly effective against infantry.
Also the are other related issues like the current ttk in combination with the screen shaking when hit highly favors weapons with high rate of fire, making slower firing weapons often weaker then their high-rof counterparts (like with shotguns).
So in the end I don't think it's not a problem that would be fixed just by increasing the ttk.
Before anything can be adjusted here other gameplay mechanics like the counter-system for AV/AI (and others) need to be improved. It's not a singular issue, it's connected to a lot of the problems PS2 still has. Including vehicle spam and the amount of aoe weaponry.